Maria Molteni is a queer interdisciplinary artist, designer, educator and mystic working on Massachusett/ Wampanoag Land for the last 25 years. They descend from Tennessee square dancers, stunt motorcyclists, quilters, beekeepers, opera singers, and machinists of various European backgrounds. Molteni is the first working artist in their family. Their practice has grown from formal studies in Painting + Printmaking, Art Education + Publication, Dance + Athletics, to incorporate research, ritual and play-based collaboration with the living and dead. Their intuitive practice spans somatic spellcraft, embodied prayer, astrology, tarot, dreamwork and color magic.

Molteni enjoys tactile and tactical problem solving- giving shape to the unseen while probing technologies of spirit work over many centuries. They experiment with many mediums; from inflatable textile to fiber craft, film/video to performance, and quilting to welding. They engage media and techniques per their ability to intersect conceptual rigor, formal poignancy, and spiritual depth. Molteni founded the international queer, feminist collective New Craft Artists in Action and is most known for monumental hand painted groundworks, often on basketball “Cosmic Courts” which incorporate site-sensitive imagery. These works, which they refer to as altars to the sky, shape-shifting labyrinths and horizontal/ anti-monuments, have laid the foundations for national movements of embodied, accessible public art. . Molteni playfully positions themself as a Meta-Physical Education coach for visionary movements.

Molteni is also deeply engaged with various regional, national, and international communities of creatives, queers and laborers. They bring over a decade of experience in competitive sports, nearly 20 years studying Shaker archives, 12 + years working with radical beekeepers, and 8 years competing on a local ocean rowing team that evolved from 19th century shipwreck “lifesavers”. Molteni self-publishes zines, artist books and multiples as Infinite Goddetc. They have exhibited at numerous galleries and museums as well as basements, meadows, and seascapes across the globe.

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Project Statement

Molteni’s practice often intersects several ongoing bodies of research at a time. Varied muses frequently run parallel or come together through project-based participatory and installation work. With a focus on queerness, mysticism and liberatory social movement within each realm, below are brief summaries that give a sense of their breadth of interests.

Maria Molteni: Soft Score is a site-specific exhibition that explores dynamic intersections of art and athletics. It employs “crafletic” expression for personal reflection and communal magic. Built upon 15+ years of socially-engaged public artwork, it also emphasizes the importance of intersectionality and equity, within sports industry and community spaces alike. 160 recycled basketball hoops hand-welded by Molteni into a cloud-scape, paired with a desk fan + Pom Pom kinetic sculpture, playfully nods at basketball’s obsession with the element of “Air”

“Sacred Sheets” reflects 17 + years of research on Shaker craft as it’s shaped by their beliefs. Here Molteni’s favorite Gift Drawing is reconstructed via hand cut + painted calligraphic shapes that emulate Shaker “spirit writing” done in trance worship states.

”All Around the Room” is an immersive installation which brings a recorded trance experience of young Shaker visionist Ann Mariah Goff into ephemeral form. Combining the concept of “borrowed light” (natural sunlight) in Shaker architecture with an 1837 transcription that describes dream-like visits to the City of Paradise.
“Stelle Scopa” and “Beautiful Seven” present a body of work + original deck of playing/ divination cards that reference reclaimed Rosary prayer, bead craft, and Italy’s most popular card game – Scopa (“broom” or “to sweep”). It also represents the perception of comets as “broom stars” by ancient astronomers via hand-made brooms dedicated to seven mountain Madonnas of Campania. Created in the Appalachian style they will reference the roots of my maternal ancestors in addition to my paternal Italian ancestry.

During their BCA residency, Molteni hopes to develop a new body of work which synthesizes elements from the projects above. They will playfully respond to the historic Italian-born movement known as Memphis Design. A Nashville-born artist and designer with Milanese ancestry, Molteni finds humor and resonance in the design group’s cross-referencing of their own cultural roots in the American South. But whereas Memphis Design forged a visionary connection between Memphis, TN and the ancient Egyptian “Pholemaic Kingdom”, Nashville, as “the Athens of the South” tends to be linked to Ancient Greece via phenomena like its epic replica of the Parthenon.